In the Sargasso Sea Part 3

"He says himself, sir, that he's not dangerous, and I s'pose he ought to know. Th' captain an' th' purser together, he orderin' 'em, have set his leg for him; and his head, he says, 'll take care of itself, bein' both thick an' hard. But he's worryin' painful because he can't look after you, sir, an' th' four or five others that got hurt in th'

storm. And I can tell you, sir," the man went on, "that all th' s.h.i.+p's company, an' th' pa.s.sengers on top of 'em, are sick with sorrow that this has happened to him; for there's not a soul ever comes near th'

doctor but loves him for his goodness, and we'd all be glad to break our own legs this minute if by that we could be mendin' his!"

The steward spoke very feelingly and earnestly, and with what he said I was in thorough sympathy; for the doctor's care of me and his friendliness had won my heart to him, just as it had won to him the hearts of all on board. But there was comfort in knowing that he had got off with only a broken leg and a broken head from a peril that so easily might have been the death of him, and of that consolation I made the most--while the steward, who was a handy fellow and pretty well trained as a surgeon's a.s.sistant, freshly bandaged my head for me as the doctor had ordered him to do, and so set me much more at my ease. After that, for the rest of the day, he came every hour or so to look after me; giving me some broth to eat and a biscuit, and some medicine that the doctor sent me with the message that it would put strength enough into a dead pig to set him to dancing--by which I knew that even if his head and leg were broken there was no break in his whimsical fun.

The steward was the only man who came near me; but this did not surprise me when he told me more about the condition that the s.h.i.+p was in, and how all hands--excepting himself, who had been detailed because of his knowledge that way to look after the hurt people under the doctor's direction--were hard at work making repairs, with what men there were among the pa.s.sengers helping too. The s.h.i.+p was not leaking, he said, and this was the luckier because her frame was so strained that it was doubtful if her water-tight compartments would hold; but the foremast had been carried away, and all the weather-boats had been mashed out of all shape or swept overboard, and the mizzen was so shaky that it seemed likely at any moment to fall. Indeed, the mast was in such a bad way, he said, that the first and second officers were for getting rid of it--and of the danger that there was of its coming down all in a heap anyway--by sending it overboard; but that the captain thought it safe to stand now that the sea was getting smooth again, and was setting up jury-stays to hold it until we made the Azores--for which islands our course was laid.

By the time that night came again the sea had pretty well gone down, and beyond the easy roll that was on her the s.h.i.+p had no motion save the steady vibration of her screw. With this comforting change the pain in my head became only a dull heavy aching, and I had a chance to feel how utterly weary I was after the strain of mind and body that had been put on me by the gale. A little after eight o'clock, as I knew by hearing the s.h.i.+p's bell striking--and mighty pleasant it was to hear regularly that orderly sound again--the steward brought me a bowl of broth and propped me up in my berth while I drank it; and cheered me by telling me that the doctor was swearing at his broken leg like a good fellow, and was getting on very well indeed. And then my weariness had its way with me, and I fell off into that deep sleep which comes to a man only when all his energy has slipped away from him on a dead low tide. How long I slept I do not know. But I do know that I was routed suddenly into wakefulness by a jar that almost pitched me out of my berth, and that an instant later there was a tremendous crash as though the whole deck above me was smas.h.i.+ng to pieces, and with this a rattle of light woodwork splintering and the sharp tinkling of breaking gla.s.s. For a moment there was silence; and then I heard shouts and screams close by me in the cabin, and a little later a great trampling on deck, and then the screw stopped turning and there was a roar of escaping steam.

I was so heavy with sleep that at first I thought we still were in the storm and that this commotion was a part of it; but as I shook off my drowsiness I got a clearer notion of the situation--remembering what the steward had told me of the condition of the mizzen-mast, and so arriving at the conclusion that it had fetched away bodily and had come cras.h.i.+ng through the cabin skylight in its fall. But what the shock was that had sent it flying--unless we had been in collision--I could not understand. And all this while the trampling on deck continued, and out in the cabin the shouts and cries went on.

I thought that the steward would come to me--forgetting that in times of danger men are apt to think only of saving their own skins--and so laid still; being, indeed, so weak and wretched that it did not seem possible to me to do anything else. But he did not come, and at the end of what seemed to me to be a desperately long time--though I doubt if it were more than five minutes--I realized that I must try to do something to help myself; and was the more nerved to action by the fact that there no longer was the sound of voices in the cabin, while the noises on deck a good deal had increased. Indeed, I began to hear up there the puffing and snorting of the donkey-engine, and so felt certain that they were hoisting out the boats.

Somehow or another I managed to get out of my berth, and on my feet, and so to the door; but when I tried to open the door I could not budge it, and in the darkness I struck my head against what seemed to be a bar of wood that stuck in through one of the upper panels and so held it fast. The blow dizzied me, for it took me close to where my cut was and put me into intense pain.

While I stood there, pulling in a weak way at the door-k.n.o.b and making nothing of it, I heard voices out in the cabin and through my broken door saw a gleam of light. But in the moment that my hope rose it went down again, for I heard some one say quickly and sharply: "It's no good. The way the spar lies we can't get at him--and to cut it through would take an hour."

And then a voice that I recognized for the steward's answered: "But the doctor ordered it. Where's an axe for a try?" To which the other man answered back again: "If it was the doctor himself we couldn't do it, and we'll tell him so. The s.h.i.+p'll be down in five minutes. We've got to run for it or the boats'll be off." And then away they ran together, giving no heed in their fright to my yells after them to come back and not leave me there to drown.

For a little while I was as nearly wild crazy as a man can be and yet have a purpose in his mind. The keen sense of my peril made me strong again. I kicked with my bare feet and pounded with my hands upon the door to break it, I shouted for help to come to me, and I gave out shrill screams of terror such as brutes give in their agony--for I was down to the hard-pan of human nature, and what I felt most strongly was the purely animal longing to keep alive.

But no one answered me, and I could tell by the sounds on deck getting fainter that some of the boats already had put off; and in a little while longer no sound came from the deck of any sort whatever, and by that I knew that all the boats must have got away. And as I realized that I was forsaken, and felt sure from what I had heard that the s.h.i.+p would float for only a few minutes longer, I gave a cry of downright despair--and then I lost track of the whole bad business by tumbling to the floor in the darkness in a dead swoon.

IX

ON THE EDGE OF THE SARGa.s.sO SEA

When I came to myself again, and found my state-room--although the dead-light was set--bright with the light which entered through the broken door, my first feeling was of wonder that I was not yet drowned; for it was evident that the sun must be well up in the heavens to s.h.i.+ne so strongly, and therefore that a good many hours must have pa.s.sed since the smash had happened that had sent everybody flying to the boats believing that the s.h.i.+p was going right down. And my next wonder was caused by the queer way in which the s.h.i.+p was lying--making me fancy at first that I was dizzy again, and my eyes tricking me--with a pitch forward that gave a slope to the floor of my state-room, of not less than twenty degrees.

For a while, in a stupid sort of way, I ruminated over these matters; and at last got hold of the simple explanation of them. Evidently, in spite of the straining of the steamer's frame in the storm, her water-tight compartments--or some of them--had held, leaving her floating with her broken bow well down in the water and her stern canted up into the air. And then the farther comforting thought came to me that if she had kept afloat for so many hours already, and seemed so steady in her new position, there was no reason why she should not keep on floating at least for as long as the fine weather lasted--which gave me a chance of rescue by some pa.s.sing vessel, and so brought a good deal of hope back into my heart.

I still was very weak and shaky, and how I was to get out of the prison that I was in I did not know. By daylight it was easy to see what held me there: which was the end of a yard, with the reef-block hanging to it, smashed through the upper panel and caught so tight in the splintered wood-work as to anchor the door fast. If the wits of the steward and of the other fellow had not been scared clean out of them they easily might have knocked in the lower part of the door with an axe and so opened a way out for me; but as their only notion had been to cut away the spar--a tough piece of work--I could not in cool blood very greatly blame them for having given up my rescue and run for their own lives.

These thoughts went through my head while I lay there, most uncomfortably, on the sloping floor. Presently I managed to get up, but felt so dizzy that I had to seat myself in a hurry on the edge of the berth until my head got steadier. Fortunately my water-jug was half full, and I had a good drink from it which refreshed me greatly; and then I had the farther good fortune to see some biscuit which the steward had left on a shelf in the corner, and as I caught sight of them I realized that I was very hungry indeed. I ate one, along with some more sups of water, and felt much the better for it; but lay down in my berth that I might save the strength it gave me until I should have thought matters over a little and settled some line of action in my mind.

That I was too weak to break the door down was quite certain, and the only other thing that I could think of was cutting out the lower panels and so making a hole through which I could crawl. As this thought came to me I remembered the big jack-knife that had been in my trousers' pocket when I went overboard from the brig; and in a minute I was on my feet--and without feeling any dizziness, this time--and got to where my clothes were hanging on a hook, and found to my joy that my knife and all the other things which had been in my pockets had been returned to them after the clothes had been dried. The knife was badly rusted and I had a hard time opening it; but the rust did not much dull it, and I seated myself upon the floor and fell to slicing away at the soft pine wood with a will. I had to rest now and then, although I found that my strength held out better than I had hoped for, and that put me back a little; but the wood was so soft that in not much more than half an hour I had the job finished--and then I slipped on my trousers, and out I went through the hole on my hands and knees.

I found the cabin in utter wreck: littered everywhere with broken gla.s.s and broken wood from the skylight, and from the smashed hanging-racks and the smashed dining-table, and with splinters from the mast--which had broken in falling, and along the whole length of the place had made a tangle of its own fragments and of the ropes and blocks which had held its sails. Of the sails themselves there were left only some fuzzy traces clinging to the bolt-ropes, all the rest having been blown loose and frayed away by the storm. Oddly enough, some of the drinking-gla.s.ses still remained unbroken in one of the racks, and with them a bottle partly filled with wine--to the neck of which a card was fastened bearing the name, Jose Rubio y Salinas, of the pa.s.senger to whom it had belonged. I took the liberty of drinking a gla.s.s of Don Jose's wine--feeling sure that he was not coming back to claim it--and felt so much better after it that I thanked him cordially for leaving it there.

Most of the state-room doors stood open, showing within clothing tossed about and trunks with their lids turned back, and the general confusion in which the pa.s.sengers had left things when they scrambled together their most precious belongings and rushed for the boats--with death, as they fancied, treading close upon their heels. But with what remained in the state-rooms I did not concern myself, being desirous first of all to get on deck and have a look about me that I might size up my chances of keeping alive. That there was no companion-way up from the cabin puzzled me a little, for I knew nothing of the internal arrangements of steams.h.i.+ps; but presently I found a pa.s.sage leading forward, and by that I came to the stair to the deck of which I was in search.

Up it I went, but when I fairly got outside and saw the desperate state of the craft that I was afloat on my heart sank. Indeed, it seemed a flying in the face of all reason that such an utter wreck should float at all. Of the foremast nothing but the splintered stump remained. The starboard rail, which had been to windward of it, was gashed by chance axe-blows made in cutting away the shrouds; and as to the port rail, twenty feet of it was gone entirely where the mast had come cras.h.i.+ng down, while the side-plates below were bulged out with the strain put upon them before the standing-rigging fastened there had fetched away. The mizzen-mast lay aft across the cabin skylight, with its standing and running rigging making a tangle on each side of it. The main-mast still stood, but with its top-mast broken off and dangling nearly to the deck. Two of the weather-boats remained fast to the davits, but so smashed that they looked like battered tin wash-basins, and would have floated just about as well. All the other boats were gone: those on the weather side, as the splintered ways and broken ropes showed, having been washed overboard; and those to leeward having been hoisted out by the tackles, which still hung from the davits and dipped lazily with the s.h.i.+p's easy motion into the sea.

All this was bad enough, but what most took the spirit out of me was the way that the s.h.i.+p was lying--her stern high up in the air, and her bow so deep in the water that the sea came up almost to her main-mast along her sloping deck. It seemed inevitable that in another moment she would follow her nose in the start downward that it had made and go straight to the bottom; and each little wave, as it lapped its way aft softly, made me fancy that the plunge had begun.

As to the outlook around me, the only comfort that I got from it was the fairness of the weather and the smoothness of the sea. For close upon the water a soft haze was hanging that even to the north, out of which blew a gentle wind, brought the horizon within a mile of me; and down to leeward the haze was banked so thick that I could make out nothing beyond half a mile. And so, even though a whole fleet might be pa.s.sing near me, my chances of rescue were very small. But from the look of the ocean I knew that no fleets were likely to be thereabouts, and that even though the haze lifted I might search long and vainly for sight of so much as a single sail. As far as I could see around me the water was covered thickly with gulf-weed, and with this was all sorts of desolate flotsam--planks, and parts of masts, and fragments of s.h.i.+ps' timbers--lolling languidly on the soft swell that was running, yet each sc.r.a.p having behind it its own personal tragedy of death and storm. And this mess of wreckage was so much thicker than I had seen when the brig was on the coast--as Bowers had called it--of the Sarga.s.so Sea as to convince me that already I must be within the borders of that ocean mystery which a little while before I had been so keen for exploring; and my fate seemed sealed to me as I realized that I therefore was in a region which every living s.h.i.+p steered clear of, and into which never any but dead s.h.i.+ps came.

X

I TAKE A CHEERFUL VIEW OF A BAD SITUATION

When I perceived the tight fix that I was in my broken head went to throbbing again, and my legs were so shaky under me that I had to sit down on the deck in a hurry in order to save myself from a fall.

Indeed, I was in no condition to face even an ordinary trouble, let alone an overwhelming disaster; for what with my loss of blood from the cut on my head, and the little food I had eaten since I got it, I was as weak as a cat.

Luckily I had the sense to realize that I needed the strength which food would give me in order to save myself from dropping off into sheer despair. And with the thought of eating there suddenly woke up in my inside a hungry feeling that surprised me by its sharpness; and instantly put such vigor into my shaky legs that I was up on them in a moment, and off to the companion-way to begin my explorations below.

And when, being come to the cabin again, I had another sup of Don Jose's wine I got quite ravenous, and felt strong enough to kick a door in--if that should be necessary--in order to satisfy my craving for food.

There was no need for staving in doors, for none of them was fastened; but it was some little time--because of my ignorance of the arrangement of steams.h.i.+ps--before I could find one that had things to eat on the other side of it. Around the cabin, and along the pa.s.sage leading forward, were only state-rooms; but just beyond the companion-way I came at last to the pantry--and beyond this again, as I found later, were the store-rooms and the galley. For the moment, however, the pantry gave me all that I wanted. In a covered box I found some loaves of bread, and in a big refrigerator a lot of cold victuals that set my eyes to dancing--two or three roast fowls, part of a big joint of beef, a boiled tongue, and so on; and, what was almost as welcome, in another division of the refrigerator a dozen or more bottles of beer. On the racks above were dishes and gla.s.ses, in a locker were knives and forks, and I even found hanging on a hook a corkscrew--and the quickness with which I brought these various things together and made them serve my purposes was a sight to see!

When I had eaten nearly a whole fowl, and had drunk a bottle of beer with it, I felt like another man; and then, pursuing my investigations more leisurely, I found in one of the lockers--which I took the liberty of prying open with a big carving-knife--four or five boxes of capital cigars. In the same locker was a package of safety-matches, and in a moment I was puffing away with such satisfaction that I fairly grew light-hearted--so great is the comfort that comes to a man with good smoking on top of a hearty meal. All sorts of bright fancies came to me: of making one of the battered boats serviceable again and getting off in it, of a s.h.i.+p blown out of her course coming to my rescue, of a strong southerly wind that would carry the hulk of the poor old _Hurst Castle_ back again into the inhabited parts of the sea. And with these thoughts cheering me I set myself to work to find out just what I had in the way of provisions aboard my shattered craft.

I did not have to search far nor long to satisfy myself that I had a bigger stock of food by me than I could eat in a dozen years. Forward of the galley were the store-rooms: a cold-room, with a plenty of ice still in it, in which was hanging a great quant.i.ty of fresh meat; a wine-room, very well stocked and containing also some cases of tobacco and cigars; and in the other rooms was stuff enough to fit up a big grocery shop on sh.o.r.e--hams and bacon and potted meats, and a great variety of vegetables in tins, and all sorts of sweets and sauces and table-delicacies in tins and in gla.s.s. Indeed, although I was full to the chin with the meal that I had just eaten, my mouth fairly watered at sight of all these good things. In the bakery I found only a loaf or two of bread, and this--as it was lying on the floor--I suppose must have been dropped in the scramble while the boats were being provisioned; but in the baker's store-room were a good many cases of fine biscuit, and more than twenty barrels of flour. In addition to all this, I did not doubt that somewhere on board was an equally large store of provisions for the use of the crew; but with that I did not bother myself, being satisfied to fare as a cabin-pa.s.senger on the good things which I had found. Finally, two of the big water-tanks still were full--the others, as I inferred from the c.o.c.ks being open, having been emptied for the supply of the boats; and as a reserve--leaving rain out of the question--I had the ice to fall back upon, of which there was so great a quant.i.ty that it alone would last me for a long while. In a word, so far as eating and drinking were concerned, I was as well off as a man could be anywhere--having by me not only all the necessaries of life but most of its luxuries as well.

Finding all these good things cheered me and put heart in me in much the same way that I was cheered and heartened by finding my floating mast after Captain Luke and the mate chucked me overboard. Again I had the certainty that death for a while could not get a chance at me; and this second reprieve was of a more promising sort than that which my mast had given me in the open sea. On board the steamer, or what was left of her, I was sure of being in positive comfort so long as she floated; and my good spirits made me so sanguine that I was confident she would keep on floating until I struck out some plan by which I could get safe away from her, or until rescue came to me by some lucky turn of chance. And so, having completed my tour of inspection, and my general inventory of the property to which by right of survival I had fallen heir, I went on deck again in a very hopeful mood.

Even the utter wreck and confusion into which the steamer had fallen, when I got to the deck and saw it again, did not crush the hope out of me as it did when I came upon it--being then weak and famished--for the first time. I even found a cause for greater hopefulness in observing that the water-line still stood, as it had stood an hour and more earlier, a little forward of the main-mast; for that showed that the water-tight compartments were holding, and that the hulk was in no immediate danger of going down. It did seem, to be sure, that the haze had grown a little thicker, and that the weed and wreckage around the steamer were thicker too; and I was convinced that my hulk was moving--or that the flotsam about it was moving--by seeing a broken boat floating bottom upward that I was sure was not in sight when I went below. But I argued with myself cheerfully that the thickening of the haze might be due to a wind coming down on me that would blow it clean away; and that a small thing like an empty boat drifting down from windward proved that the _Hurst Castle_ herself was moving southward very slowly, or perhaps was not moving at all. And so, still in good spirits, I set myself to looking carefully for something that would float me, in case I decided to abandon the hulk and make a dash for it--on the chance of falling in with a pa.s.sing vessel--out over the open sea.

But when I had made the round of the deck--at least of the part of it that was out of water--I had to admit that getting away from the steamer was a sheer impossibility, unless I might manage it by cobbling together some sort of a raft. It had been all very well for me to fancy, while I was being cheered with chicken and beer and tobacco down in the pantry, that I could make one of the battered boats sea-worthy; but my round of the deck showed me that with all my training in mechanics I never could make one of them float again--for the sea had wrenched and hammered them until they were no better than so much old iron. The raft, certainly, was a possibility. Spars that would serve for its body were lying around in plenty, and with the doors from the rooms below I could deck it over so as to make it both solid and dry; and somewhere aboard the s.h.i.+p, no doubt, were carpenter's tools--though, most likely, they were down under water forward and could be come at only by diving for them. Still, the raft was a possibility; and so was comforting to think about as giving me another reprieve from drowning in case the water-tight compartments broke down--and as that break might come at any moment, and as the job would take me two days at the shortest, I realized that I could not set about it too soon.

XI

MY GOOD SPIRITS ARE WRUNG OUT OF ME

But the other chance which I had thought of, that my hulk might be blown clear of the Sarga.s.so Sea and back into the track of trade again, still was to be reckoned with; and to know how that chance was working it was necessary that I should find out my exact position on the ocean, and then check off the changes in it by fresh observations taken from day to day. And as I saw that the sun was close upon the meridian, and no time to waste if I wanted to secure my first noon-sight, I put off beginning my carpentering until I should have hunted for the s.h.i.+p's instruments and got the lat.i.tude and longitude that would give me my departure on my drifting voyage.

This was so simple a piece of work that I antic.i.p.ated no difficulty in executing it. While the low-lying haze narrowed my horizon it did not sufficiently obscure the sun to interfere with sight-taking; I could count upon finding the chronometers still going, they being made to run for fifty-six hours and the s.h.i.+p having been abandoned only the night before; and where I found the chronometers I felt sure that I should find also a s.e.xtant and a chart. But when I went at this easy-looking task I was brought up with a round turn: there were no chronometers, there was no s.e.xtant, there was no chart of the North Atlantic--there was not even a compa.s.s left on board!

It took me some little time to arrive at a certainty in this series of negatives. I fancied--because it had been that way aboard the _Golden Hind_--that the captain's room would be one of those opening off from the cabin, and so began my search for it in that quarter. But when I had made the round of all the state-rooms I was satisfied that they had been occupied only by pa.s.sengers. The single timepiece that I found--for the clock in the cabin had been smashed when the mizzen-mast came down--was a fine gold watch lying in one of the berths partly under the pillow, where its owner must have left it in his hurry to get to the boats. It still was going, and I slipped it into my pocket--feeling that a thing with even that much of life in it would be a comfort to me; but the hour that it gave was a quarter past eleven (it having been set to the s.h.i.+p's time the day before, I suppose) and therefore was of no use to me as a basis for sight-taking.

Having exhausted the possibilities of the cabin I concluded that the captain's quarters must have been forward, and so s.h.i.+fted my search to the forward deck-house; and as I found a blue uniform coat and a suit of oil-skins in the first room that I entered I was sure that in a general way I was on the right track. But in none of these rooms did I find what I was looking for--though I did find in one of them, and greatly to my satisfaction, a chest of carpenter's tools and a big box of nails. The nails must have been there by pure accident, but the tools probably were the carpenter's private kit; and as in the course of my farther search I did not come across the s.h.i.+p's carpenter-shop--which no doubt was under water forward--I felt that this chance supply of what I needed for my raft-building was a very lucky thing for me indeed.

The upper story of the deck-house still remained to be investigated; and when, by the steps leading to the steamer's bridge, I got up there and entered a little room behind the wheel-house, I was pretty sure that at last I had found the place where what I wanted ought to be.

The part forward of the doors on each side of this room--a good third of it--was filled by a chart-locker having a dozen or more wide shallow drawers; and the flat top of the locker showed at its four corners the p.r.i.c.kings of thumb-tacks which had held the charts open there, and four tacks still were in place with sc.r.a.ps of thick white paper under them--as though some one in too great a hurry to loosen it properly had ripped the chart away.